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Comment by buzzmerchant | Hacker News Reader

When i was younger, i had intense bouts of what psychologists call intrinsic motivation.

As i get older, this happens less and less – which is a massive shame.

I wanted to understand whether there was any good evidence as to what intrinsic motivation is and how i might be able to cultivate it in my adult life. To do this, i did a massive deep dive of the scientific literature surrounding intrinsic motivation. This is the outcome of that research.

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Something I have been thinking about and experimenting with is the hypothesis that as I age, my neuronal mitochondria are simply producing less ATP per hour than they used to. Great health and sleep are the expected fixes, but I’m also now supplementing with enzymes and substrates for each phase of the Krebs Cycle, treating mito function like an Internal Combusikb Engine and my biochemical attempts like a Mech Engineer optimizing horsepower and efficiency.

Anecdotally (because I’m not going to syringe my brain) I am feeling a lot more enduring wakefulness and motivation than when I skip them in my morning routine.

I did a chatGPT dive to validate this but that’s not exactly a biochemical lit review.

Do you mind sharing what you're taking?

PQQ, CoQ10, NAD+, Creatine.

NAC to clean free-radical oxygen damage to dna.

Thanks! Some familiar names from looking at mitochondrial supplement stacks from the literature. I guess I'll just have to try for myself.

There is risk in this approach. Nobody has any real idea what supplements are doing in all of the bodily tissues, and sometimes the effects are not benign. "Folate acceleration" of cancer is just one such cautionary tale. Vitamin E and heart failure is another, though I'm not sure how that one ultimately settled out.

There is a wide list of other maneuvers to try first.

- Time in bed does not equate to "great sleep." Make sure you don't have sleep apnea. Practice good sleep hygiene.

- Delivery of oxygen to your brain is just as important as mitochondrial aging, if not more. Get some aerobic exercise (even walking is fine) -- it wakes me up and maybe will do the same for you. Heed your vascular risk factors, because crap in your cerebral vessels will not help.

- The one supplement exception is vitamin B12, which neurons must have. Deficiency can be very hard to judge by symptoms, so I'd get it measured and act accordingly.

I would say daily high level cardio for at least half an hour and optimal sleep is important for good mitochondrial function. nootropics are a big subject, but some omega 3 and other lipid type supplements would be important for brain function, and I would think electrolyte balance would be important, all the electrolytes, not just sodium and potassium.

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